


Regrowth

by tahanrien



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-07 18:50:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5467268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tahanrien/pseuds/tahanrien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone had to go down there at some point, Toast reasoned with herself on her way down the stairs to the war rooms - rooms filled with machinery, and probably bodies, with slaves, and war boys too sick or too young, and blood bags... Toast could taste the dust of the Fury Road in her mouth.</p><p>Toast forced herself to continue walking. Someone had to go down there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Regrowth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hollimichele](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollimichele/gifts).



> All the thanks to Yeomanrand and rabidsamfan for being two amazing beta readers!
> 
> The ideas in this fic stem from the super interesting concept of Transitional Justice and Reconciliation. If you are interested in learning more about it, you can start [here](https://www.ictj.org/about/transitional-justice), for example.

Someone had to go down there at some point, Toast reasoned with herself on her way down the stairs to the war rooms - rooms filled with machinery, and probably bodies, with slaves, and war boys too sick or too young, and blood bags... Toast could taste the dust of the Fury Road in her mouth.

Toast forced herself to continue walking. Someone had to go down there. War boys, not even as tall as Toast herself, were reporting the status to Furiosa. But, despite what Capable was saying, Toast knew they had to see for themselves. They had to check. They couldn't just let things run on like that - people had done that for too long with Immortan Joe. Not anymore. And if Furiosa wasn't going to...

Toast's parents had been drifters in the Wastelands, so-called by steady-settled folk like the Citadel people who never left, no matter how bad it got. Her onemother taught Toast a way with guns; that’s what Toast remembers. Not the skills, and certainly not her onemother's face, but the feeling of steel in her small hand, of counting shots and hits and bullets for her mothers. Her othermother had stripped the flesh off their prey, but Toast couldn't remember her face either. Couldn't remember what they had hunted at all, only the blood on Toast’s hands afterwards and how slick and warm freshly hunted flesh had felt in Toast's own little hands. Toast remembered how to pick bullets out of flesh.

Which made her more of an expert than any of them, except, of course, for Furiosa. Who was still weak, and sick, and quiet. And the Vuvalini, tainted by too much killing.

The called her Toast the Knowing. Now Toast had to prove her name.

Toast entered the room quietly; she knew how to do that. The first room was big and Toast could only assume the others would be as well. Machinery and tech stood there, waiting to be rebuilt, weapons lined tables and walls. Toast felt the hot sand in her neck as a memory, the chase, away from Immortan Joe and then back, the echoes of shots and explosions. The loudness.

Here, it was quiet.

Everyone watched her.

There weren't many war boys in the room, only children, really. But Capable's words about their innocence were hard to match to faces with the room so dark and shadows so long. The air smelled of fire.

Capable wanted the war boys out of there; she wanted to teach them to read, to write, to discover more of the world. Cheedo had told Toast to shut the whole weapon business down, to clean it all out and drag out the ones responsible, the ones who weren't just puppets. If Toast knew how to find that out, she would just do it. But she remembered the Bullet Farm and Gas Town. They were still out there, and she just... wondered. If they weren't too vulnerable, should they stop with weapons altogether? At least until they had some trade going, some kind of agreement about the water. Angharad would have known more, probably, about how to handle this, but she was another person Toast could no longer ask.

Toast hadn't even asked The Dag what to do, even though she had wanted to, and when she’d asked Furiosa, she stayed quiet, like she was asking Toast to make the decision herself.

So Toast did.

Toast stepped forward, facing the war boys. "Show me what you are working on," she said.

*

"Would you bring me some more?" the milk mother - Ea, she had told Cheedo that her name was. Ea. - said. She pointed at her water, almost empty.

Cheedo wanted to scowl. She was already done for the day. And besides: She wasn't here to bring water and carry around snacks, but that was all the milk mothers had her doing. And when Cheedo had complained about it, no one had listened: The Dag had been working with her hands buried deep in the earth, planting her seeds and helping them grow, too occupied with both the growing plants and her growing belly. Capable hushed her, told her it wasn't forever: they needed the milk mothers on their side. Toast had been the one to send Cheedo to them, of course she wouldn't let Cheedo change her mind. And Furiosa didn't seem to hear much of anything these days, her stare at Cheedo more vacant than alive.

Cheedo brought the water. The milk mother - Ea, damn it - smiled at her, sweet and calm. "Thank you very much," she said. Kind words, but spoken with steel in her voice. There was something in her that reminded Cheedo of Angharad, how she had talked about her pregnancy, of leaving. "I'll soon be able to move around much more."

"It's no problem," Cheedo said.

Cheedo didn't remember much of her early childhood. Her parents were distant memories, and then there was the Citadel, growing up and the biodome and Immortan Joe. Memories blurring together, as if everything had happened at the same time. Sometimes Cheedo wished she remembered her own family. Sometimes she thought she had had a new one. Maybe. It wasn't like Cheedo knew what a family was like. And with The Dag's baby, it was only going to get bigger. Cheedo wondered about the milk mothers’ lives. She couldn't imagine doing that. She didn't want to.

She left, saying goodbye to Ea, and on the way had to remind herself that the milk mothers hadn't chosen their life. And if they needed help now, even with bringing water...

When she crawled into bed that evening, curling close to The Dag, careful not to touch her belly, Cheedo couldn't stop thinking about it. Her life would have been different, if she had been selected as a milk mother. If she had stayed outside the Citadel, waiting and hoping for water. It all seemed so alien, like lives not lived. 

Cheedo curled closer to The Dag, until she could breathe in her sweet smell, of earth and flowers and plants and seeds: the only thing The Dag was interested in anymore. The seeds, not Cheedo or the ongoings in the Citadel, not in how Furiosa had stopped reacting and how her fever was still strong, not The Dag's own pregnancy. Sometimes Cheedo wished that Angharad was still with them. She always wanted that, but here, right now, Angharad would find the right words to say. Cheedo sometimes wished she wasn't so fragile.

That night, even listening to The Dag's deep breaths, Cheedo took a long time to fall asleep.

*

When Capable went outside, all the war boys wanted to come with her. Even the ones too young and too weak to help with building water ways, moving pipes. They perked up when they saw her and looked at Capable with strange, sad eyes. And Capable couldn't say no.

The people kept their distance and Capable doubted the distance was a matter of respect. They were afraid of the war boys. Of children.

It made Capable stand even taller.

They are building a water basin right now, setting roughly cut stones upon stones. Capable wanted to get everyone inside the Citadel and maybe they could, one day. For now, the Citadel was an unknown with too many rooms unexplored, too many operations no one understood but Furiosa, and Furiosa wasn't talking. So Capable took the war boys and got them out.

She remembered her time before the biodome, before Immortan Joe, only distantly. She sometimes thinks she had a younger brother, one she had to herd around, and when she looks at herself now, it would explain so much.

"There is a slope, but we can mend it," someone said behind her.

Capable turned to the war boy. It was hard to keep them apart, with their skin starting to color in the sun, all staring at her in rapt attention, eager to prove themselves.

Capable felt ashamed, because knowing their names was the least she should be able to do. They were not things, either.

"Thank you," she told the war boy. He was still small. Just slightly taller than her hips. A few of them had gotten growth spurts, but enough hadn't - he wasn't too different from the others. 

"Do that. Good work," she added.

The war boy smiled at the attention, until something hit him, made him stumble.

It landed on the ground and Capable looked down to find a spoon, roughly made of wood, that someone had thrown.

The war boy wasn't smiling anymore. The people watching never threw anything at Capable, never hissed at her, or spat at her. The spoon shouldn't have hurt much but the war boy's eyes reminded her of Nux. Capable reached over before she thought about it, patted him on the side of his head, pressed her chin against his forehead. She didn't kiss it, but she didn't need to: attention-starved as he was, he relaxed the moment she touched him.

She saw the people moving around them. More than anything Capable wished Angharad were still around, because she would know what to say.

*

The Dag carefully dug her hands into the earth, cupping them right under the plant, where she could feel the roots tug at her fingers. She wondered if that was too high, if she should grip it deeper, but she was already in. Might as well get it done. She had other seeds that looked the same, so she could try again if she got this one wrong. Still, she'd prefer it if she didn't need to.

She raised the plant slowly, careful not to tear the roots. With the first plant she had put in, the roots had been bulging, yellow dirty fruits hanging off them. And The Dag had killed it when she ripped it out.

She should be more careful with the Keeper of the Seeds' gift, after all.

With the plant in her hand, she stepped over to the table Cheedo had set up for her. Carefully, The Dag placed the plant there, spreading it out a bit to look at it. But beyond the green leaves and the normal looking roots, The Dag couldn't see anything edible.

Maybe some more time. She took the plant up and carried it back to its old place. There were some places in the sun, some in the shadow, and The Dag had quickly learned that not all seeds worked in the same environment. Some needed more water, some less. That was clear. How much each one needed, however...

The Dag wanted to ask Furiosa, who had grown up with plants, had lived in the Green Place. But Furiosa was still ill, too tired and wounded to care much about The Dag's questions, and The Dag knew better than to pester her when she should be recovering.

She carefully bent down on her knees. Her back protested. The work in the garden had gotten harder these last weeks. Her back protested, hurting in ways it hadn't ever before, and her feet and knees felt wobbly. But the plants needed caring for, so The Dag focused on that.

The Dag avoided looking at any mirrors, but she knew she had gotten rounder and it was getting harder to bend over to get at the plants. Still doable though.

Carefully, The Dag put the plant back into its place. It had grown here, with only a bit of water and a lot of sunlight, so it would continue to grow here as well. She wove its roots into the ground again, pushed the earth over it. With a groan, she pushed herself up. Her belly cramped up for a second, making her gasp. Then it was over. The Dag brushed the dirt off her hands.

The Dag placed a hand on her belly. She never did that in public, or when she was with Cheedo. The baby wasn't moving at the moment, but sometimes in the night, The Dag felt it kick. Or maybe that was just her dreams. She didn't know and didn't dare to ask the milk mothers who would know.

She could have asked Angharad... But The Dag doubted she had had much experience either beyond her own pregnancy. Thinking about her, brought her words back to The Dag's mind. Brave and Beautiful. And what had the Keeper of the Seeds said? What if The Dag's baby was a girl? Yes, what if.

She had thought about getting rid of it, even if it was a girl, even if it looked everything like her and nothing like Immortan Joe, but...

The Dag already knew how to name her, after all.

She pressed her hand harder on her belly.

"Angharad," she said.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yuletide, my dear recipient! I loved thinking about the future of the Citadel and how the wives will deal with the challenges they will encounter trying to help the transition to a new Green Place along. Thank you very much for this awesome prompt!


End file.
